


the fighter still remains

by bartonbones



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst, Gen, but also like!! friendship!! and camaraderie !! and found families !! and a lot of fists, cassian andor is the mom!friend and i'll fight you on that, dubiously characterized bodhi, five plus one fic, i guess? if you know me you know that everything is angst all the time so, jyn and bodhi can't stop punching people, jyn/bodhi friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:44:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9476276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bartonbones/pseuds/bartonbones
Summary: Bodhi Rook is tense and hot-headed, and ever since the Empire: a little bit repressed, and ever since Saw Gerrera: a little bit mad. Jyn Erso is angry and quick to use her fists, has never really not been on edge, and has, before this, never had anything to lose for it. Cassian Andor is just trying to keep his team out of trouble.OR: five fights that Cassian has to break up, and one fight he starts.





	

i.

 

(for the other.)

 

“You want to say that again?”

 

Jyn’s voice was measured in teaspoons and dashes—a teaspoon of anger, a dash of righteousness, a healthy sprinkling of don’t-mess-with-me, all put together carefully, if unconsciously, into a molotov-cocktail of a _look_.

 

But apparently bitter, horrible teenage Alliance recruits came with their own fair share of face-blindness, who also happened to be tone-deaf, along with being complete and utter bastards, because one half of them, the stockier, more brutish half of the duo, straddled up to Jyn and looked down at her, his own look more carefully and egotistically created so that she might think to be afraid of him.

 

“Sure,” he said, with a smile that showed teeth that were described as nothing but painfully white. His whole face, in fact, was brutally untouched—thuggish in words but clearly, to Jyn, not in action. Jyn would be surprised if the boy had ever felt pain worse than a stubbed toe, or perhaps the bite of the sharp edge of a silver spoon.

 

Jyn had nothing against people who were fighting just because they wanted to fight. People who fought just because their fists wanted to hit something were not unwelcome, because fists were fists, and they certainly had their merits just for not having blindly aligned themselves with the equally as violence-ridden empire, but just because she had nothing against them didn’t mean Jyn had to _like_ them.

 

“He’s _Imperial scum_ ,” said the boy, as if that could possibly ever _mean_ anything to him, who the Empire had taken nothing from.

 

Jyn did not waste a beat. She thought of Bodhi’s sweet face and his good heart and his bravery, and she kneed the kid, who was still leaning over her, in the stomach. He was shocked, and again, Jyn had to stress— _inexperienced_ , and so he did not recover in time to stop her left hand from grabbing a fistful of his hair and bringing his face down just a little closer so that her right hand could punch him in the square of his straightly-angled nose.

 

It was at this point that his friend cottoned on to what was happening—slow, desperately slow, because they’d never had to think quickly in their lives, and tried to grab on to Jyn to pull her away.

 

Jyn kicked him in the knee and then brought her attention back to the one who had said it, so stiff-collared and self-righteous. (“It’s just a marvel to me they hire Imperial scum like that. They should skin him alive before he turns us all in—” and Jyn did not quite hear the rest of it, as she was already planning how best to win the fight.)

 

“Listen to me—” said Jyn, pulling him down so that she could look down on him instead of up at him, because even if her hand would still be vice-like on his neck and the threat of her other hand and knee and elbow close at hand if she were looking up, their was nothing like the symbolism of looking down to top off the feeling of victory.

 

“You say that again,” she said, because just because Bodhi was not there to hear it _this_ time, did not mean that he might not be there the next, “And I will kill you where you stand, got it? _He’s_ not scum but I’ll tell you who—”

 

“ _Jyn,_ ” said Cassian, who always managed to show up at the wrong-bloody-time. He had the voice of a mother, which was irritating, because he was not without flaws himself. He pulled her arm, coarsely, off of the boy.

 

“Go back to whatever you were told to do,” said Cassian. “And take your friend with you.”

 

The kids left—less bruised up and with far less fear in their hearts than Jyn had intended.

 

“What was that for?” said Jyn.

 

“You have to stop beating up on the recruits, alright?”

 

Jyn blinked.

 

“Why.”

 

It was not a question, she did not say it as one. Jyn did not want to hear the answer anymore than Cassian wanted to waste his breath on an answer that she would not accept.

 

Cassian sighed. He shook his head, and said something under his breath that Jyn couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded both exhausted and annoyed, and maybe—although perhaps she imagined this, her ego not being nonexistent—a little bit reverent.

 

“Just—don’t come crying to me when you get in trouble, for Force’s sake,” he said. “And stop leaving bruises. And stop _getting_ bruises. They’re hell to explain to superiors.”

 

“You would know?” said Jyn, with her eyebrow raised.

 

Cassian sighed again. His wore his sighs like some of the people in the Labor Camp had worn their uniforms—long suffering, repentant, resigned. It would look truly pitiful if Jyn didn’t know him better.

 

“I give up,” said Cassian. He rolled his eyes as if to some unknown ally that might be on his side of the situation, his palms flat in the air in surrender, and then turned on his heels and walked away, shouting back at her: “I give up!”

Jyn knew that he did not, and it’s a week or so later, when she sees Bodhi with shaking out his fist, storming away as someone holding their cheek storms in the opposite direction, that she tips her chin in approval and smiles brightly at him, realizing that if anybody’s going to correct someone for insulting Bodhi, she can trust him to do it himself.

 

ii.

 

(for the other.)

 

You can hear a lot from underneath a ship.

 

Mainly, you can hear your own breath shake as you try to fix something that’s only being held together by glue and gumption. You can hear the terrifying scraps of metal of pieces that aren’t supposed to scrape together and the fear of our own failure and imminent death that will occur if you forget to screw in the other side and this metal thing that weighs more than your entire family drops down squarely on your chest.

 

Bodhi doesn’t like hearing any of those things, so he focuses on eavesdropping, which: yes. Is wrong. But also, is more interesting than the terrifying thought of slicing a vein open on the jagged metal or burning his hand off with the stolen, secondhand and donated first-generation tools that the Rebellion has to offer.

 

He mostly hears about the low-grade drama that pervades the base. Sex and scandal, betrayal and judgment passed in laughter-laced voices that have no right to be judging anyone at all. Sometimes, and these are his least favorite—when he works a bit late, just because he can’t sleep without seeing something behind his eyelids, people think there’s no one here and do one of two things:

 

One, which is unbearable, unspeakable, and far more private than Bodhi wants to be privy to, although he sometimes tells key snippets to Jyn and Baze to make them choke on their caf, and the other thing, which is much less loving and more blown-out arguments of people entangled in each other, which happens when there are only a couple of thousand of people on base and years to spend with each of them.

 

He didn’t hear either, now, though, which was nice. Just the gossip that kept Bodhi well informed on who to avoid and who to befriend. He listened to it idly while he tried to fix the leak, and doesn’t pay that much attention until his ears pick up on certain words that ring a little closer to his heart than the others.

 

“I heard she was in a labor camp before Captain Andor picked her up,” said someone—a woman’s voice, hoarse and unrepentant.

 

Someone near to her and to Bodhi laughed. Bodhi set down his tools and looked to his left—two pairs of feet, one bigger than the other, both in the strapping, dirty, bedraggled uniforms of maintenance crews.

 

“If Andor picks up all the trash, what’ll be left for us?”

 

They both laughed, then, and Bodhi narrowed his eyes.

 

It’s not so much their words that makes Bodhi’s fingers itch. Words are words. He’s been called a lot of cruel words and a lot of kind words and all the sorts of words in between, and then got them all scrambled to hell by Saw, so they don’t mean a lot to him.

 

It’s the laugh.

 

It’s the careless, cruel light-hearted laugh over something that is so, _so_ not lighthearted.

 

It’s finding their amusement in something that the possibility of certainly sacred Bodhi, when he worked for the Empire, and had been a terrible reality for Jyn. It’s their stress-relieving joy and camaraderie that come from something that put Jyn in a place where she most assuredly had neither.

 

It’s what makes him slide out from underneath the ship and scramble to his feet and punch, his fingers haplessly curled into a frantic, clumsy fist, the woman right in the jaw.

 

“What the—”

 

And then he turns around and punches the man, for laughing.

 

They all stand after that, a bit shocked, because Bodhi is not _un_ impulsive, and he doesn’t always think his fights through. He could think of a million paragraphs he’d like to say to them—about how terrible the labor camps are, about how they suck the life from anyone sent there, about how he once knew a boy who smiled brightly and did the right thing in front of the wrong person and it’s been five years so he’s most assuredly dead, about how the Empire is a lot of things, but it’s sure as hell not something to laugh about, about—

 

“Bodhi?” said Cassian.

 

His voice is mainly shocked, like the two maintenance crew members that stand next to him, holding their faces.

 

And then Cassian sighed. It was long-suffering and world weary.

 

“You too,” he muttered. And he pressed his palms into his eyes and sighed another sigh and then pointed away from them and told the maintenance workers to go find something to do and muttered something long, tedious, and exhausted in a different language.

 

“You should have heard what they were—”

 

“I _know_ ,” said Cassian, sharply. “I know what they say. But if you hit them, you get suspended, and I lose part of my team. Force. It’s not that hard to understand.”

 

Cassian has never had this conversation with Bodhi before, but Bodhi gleams off of his weariness and seeming repetition that he has had it with someone else on the team, and the corner of Bodhi’s lips quirked up because—of course. He didn’t know why he punched them for her—if Cassian’s tone is anything to go by, she’s gotten to them herself.

 

iii.

 

(for themselves.)

 

It’s fair to say that there are just some things that set Jyn off.

 

It’s just what her life is. It’s just what happens when you’re raised, for the most part, in fear of something—the Empire, rebels who know that you’re descended from someone who was is part of the Empire, people who don’t fancy you stealing the bare minimum of what you need to survive, and stormtroopers at labour camps who are truly at the bottom of their careers and need to take it out on someone.

 

So, yes, it is fair to say that some things just set her off.

 

It is unfair to say that she doesn’t realize this, or isn’t capable, after the fact, to realize why exactly someone make her teeth scrape across each other or her shoulders tense so terribly she swears they might stick that way.

 

She’s perfectly well aware that there are just somethings you can’t barrel fist down deep enough that they don’t come back up, sometimes, unbidden and unneeded, it’s just: she realizes this mainly _after_ she’s already got her fist in someone’s flesh and the anger has already gone past emotion and into action.

 

“You say that again,” said Jyn, “Talk to me like that again and I swear to you I’ll rip your—”

 

It’s just, also, sometimes the anger binds her to _who_ she’s talking to, as well, and it’s at the moment of threatening him that her eyes fall down to the dotted sign of rank pinned pristinely to his jacket, underneath where her curved fingers grip it angrily, pulling the fabric taut and shoving it forward so that it sits prominently in front of her eyes:

 

Five pips.

 

General.

 

Her eyes slid up from the uniform to the face: General. General Draven.

 

Her lips froze.

 

It’s the sort of shock that comes not from assaulting a General, but the shock that comes from realizing that she _cares_ that she assaulted a General. And not just because she’s being pragmatic, and not just because she knows there’s some awful punishment for it or something that Saw can’t protect her from or the very, very real possibility of execution or death by the hands of another inmate.

 

It’s true, genuine, clumsy shock that comes from the fact that she doesn’t want to get in trouble because she doesn’t want to _get in trouble_.

 

That she doesn’t want to let the Alliance down, because she _doesn’t want to let the Alliance down_.

 

Because although she doesn’t give a damn about General Draven’s face, it’s not just General Draven’s face that she’s punching—it’s the Alliance’s, as a whole, and because Cassian is part of that, it’s his, too.

 

She doesn’t want to get in trouble because she doesn’t want to lose her place here, and she doesn’t know what to do to make _up_ for that, or fix that, when something as simple as words that echo of stormtroopers and brutal upbringing sets her off like this.

 

Her hand is still on the General’s jacket when Cassian steps smoothly between them.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry about her, General, you have to understand, it’s—”

 

Cassian didn’t have the words for it anymore than Jyn did. She rubbed her wrist with her other hand, soothing it, and swallowed.

 

She felt guilty for hitting Draven, which is an indescribably new feeling.

 

“She can’t just beat her away around the base and expect everything to be alright,” said Draven, his voice even.

 

“I know, sir,” said Cassian. “You have to under _stand_ —”

 

“I _do_ understand,” said Draven. “She’s not the first and she’s not going to be the last. It’s just not an excuse. Erso—work on it. Andor—make sure that she does.”

 

With that, Draven is off, and Jyn is left to face Cassian—who, in all honesty, is scarier.

 

“I don’t want to know why—”

 

Jyn grits her teeth.

 

“I just want you to really listen to me, Jyn, when I say that you can’t _do_ this,” said Cassian. Jyn struggled with her feelings of both shock, guilt, and residual anger.

 

“I _am_ trying to listen,” she bit out. “It’s just—you know. Not easy when everybody starts to sound the same—stormtroops, generals, all with the _same—_ ”

 

“ _No,_ ” said Cassian, holding out a finger. “No, it’s not. You know that. Draven can be rough, but he’s _not_ a stormtrooper and you _know_ that.”

 

Jyn does. She just wished her fists did, too.

  


iv. 

 

(for themselves)

 

“So...this is the little deflector I’ve heard so much about.”

 

Bodhi looked up from his work. He was drafting a flight plan for a mission that seemed tedious and that he wasn’t even going on—but he was the best at drafting flight plans of all of them, since the Empire had been nothing if not brutally efficient. They’d used nearly eight percent less fuel since Bodhi got there and began doing it all for them.

 

She was a lithe woman, tall as Bodhi was short. She was a Lieutenant—same rank as Bodhi, so he didn’t know why she made him immediately so on edge.

 

He blinked up at her owlishly and tried to rack his brain—did he know her? It was awful, but since the whole thing with Saw—well. Sometimes old memories that had gotten lost got thrown in with new ones, too, and he remembered faces he wished he could forget with infinite detail and new faces with only a single blurred, clumsy brushstroke.

 

“You don’t know me,” she soothed, and then she moved to sit next to him, making Bodhi draw up his legs from the cross legged position they had been, so comfortably, sitting in before. “It’s Joulyo. Lieutenant Joulyo. Nice to meet you, Rook.”

 

She didn’t extend her hand for Bodhi to shake, so he just nodded, deftly, and then furrowed his eyebrowe and shook his head.

 

“Do you—need help with something?”

 

“No,” she said. “I’m just wondering. You know. With defectors, it’s just—”

 

And _that_ is enough to set Bodhi immediately on edge. His teeth grit and his shoulders tensed and he started to get the unaffectionately familiar feelings of fight-or-flight in his chest.

 

“Just—what,” he ground out, carefully.

 

“You know,” she said. “You understand. You stick with something for—how many years did you work for the Empire, again?—it’s bound to stick into your heart a little more than something you’ve been a part of for a few months.”

 

Bodhi focused on regulating his breathing. It didn’t occur to him to be scared, or angry, or anything—he mostly just felt cornered, like he had to get out of where he was immediately.

 

“And like, I’m just trying to protect my crew, you know? My cause?”

 

“It’s my cause too,” said Bodhi. It shook in his chest, even though his words were quiet.

 

“I just want to ask you some questions, that’s all—”

 

 _(We’re just going to ask you some questions_ , Saw said, and then—then. His mind is being torn apart like pages from a book and his memories that he tucked safely away from the Empire are tortured from him, pulled like a rotten tooth, and the memories that tried to forget are brought to the forefront and the fear that he had and the love that he had and the bravery that erupted from both felt as if it had been stolen from him, too—)

 

“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Bodhi, his chest now rising and crashing and his hands not so steady on the datapad.

 

“Well, I’d rather I _did,_ and so do a lot of us.”

 

Bodhi licked his lips. How many of them, exactly? And—hadn’t he done _enough_?

 

Galen had only told him to deliver the message. He thought it was going to be a lot easier than this—to be good. To be brave. His bravery failed him now and he feared his goodness was about to go along with it.

 

“We have a lot of questions, Rook.”

 

“You can ask a General, or something, I’m sure—” Bodhi’s teeth clashed and his chest _ached_. “They can help you with those.”

 

He shoved himself off of the ground, held the datapad like a lifeline, and tried— _tried_ to walk away.

 

“Fine!” she said. “Rat us out then, see where that will get you, stormtrooper!”

 

Bodhi turned on his heel.

 

He doesn’t mean to be so angry about it. They have every right to be cautious of someone who was part of the institution that they risk their very lives to fight against—it’s natural it would take awhile for them to trust him. It’s just.

Just that they don’t know about what happened with Gerrera, that they don’t know what he _went_ through to deflect, that it’s not just as easy as the choice they made to fight. That it was barely a choice for him to join the _Empire_ , in the first place—that when you live in an occupied city and your family is poor and they offer you just enough credits to keep them alive but not enough to save up enough to ever leave on, that when it’s all like that your choices narrow and your morality is defined by: do I indirectly kill strangers, or my own family?

 

Do I do the right thing for them, or the right thing for everyone else?

 

They get to choose. They get to choose to do the right thing instead of being apathetic, they get to pretend their bravery means more than his just because they believed they’d never done the wrong thing, made the wrong choice, been lied to or confused or helpless.  

 

It’s the sort of thing that made him angry at her but also, angry at everything else, and it’s that sort of thing that drove his fist and made him shout something unintelligible at her and made him vibrate, made him shine with anger and envy and hurt.

 

“Bodhi—!”

 

Cassian’s voice shook him out of where he was. Slowly, he uncurled his fist from her jacket, and slowly, he took a step back, and slowly he wiped a shaking hand across his lips and looked down at the floor while Cassian spoke to her and sent her away.

 

“Bodhi,” said Cassian again, and this time his hand is on Bodhi’s shoulder.

 

Bodhi looked up.

 

Guilt and shame shine in Cassian’s eyes every bit as much as resolute, but gentle, admonishment.

 

“She wasn’t right,” said Cassian.

 

“I know,” said Bodhi. “I know, and I shouldn’t have punched her. I—”

 

“No,” said Cassian. “You—”

 

Cassian rubbed his forehead.

 

“It’s not so _simple_ , Bodhi,” said Cassian. “I wish you could punch her. I wish _I_ could punch her.”

 

Bodhi had just enough energy left in him to snort a little bit—soft and humored. It’s nice to know that Cassian would have liked to punch her too.

 

“But?” he asked.

  
“But, it’s just—if you complain to someone higher up, Bodhi, they’ll listen to you,” he said. “I swear it, I’ll make them listen to you. And then you won’t get in trouble, and I won’t lose my team, and—you all just don’t make it very easy for me, alright? I get it. But I went through this whole racket and I haven’t gotten into any—into _half_ as many fist fights and you and Jyn manage to get in to—Force knows how many a week. I’m doing my best, Bodhi.”

 

Bodhi picked up on “ _half as many_ ” and stored it away for later use.

 

“I know,” said Bodhi. He felt a little shame—not for himself, but because Cassian did sound tired, and just like he was trying to keep them all together and out of trouble and it was hard to guide four people into a new life especially when two of them tended to be just—a _tad_ hot headed.

 

Just a tad.

 

v.

 

(eachother.)

 

“You can be just a _little bit_ thankless, you know that?” said Bodhi, pulling on Jyn’s arm to get it off of his chest, so that he could break free of her grip entirely.

 

“Well you can be a little bit _dramatic_ ,” said Jyn, who let him move her arm only so that she could reposition it around his neck. “You know _that?_ ”

 

“Maybe that happens when you realize there’s more to the world than your own—” Bodhi struggled, flipped Jyn around so that he was on top of her instead of the other way around, “— _face_!”

 

Jyn growled. There was absolutely no other word for it—Jyn growled through her teeth at the comment and elbowed Bodhi in the stomach, who winced and then growled angrily back. They did just that, for a few moments—fighting and hurling insults at each other, elbowing and not fighting dirty but still fighting and growling at each other until Cassian stepped in and swore and tried to pull them off each other.

 

“What the _hell,_ ” he said, as he took a hit meant for Jyn and could only swear and shake his head in shock. “What the _hell,_ you two?”

 

It was pretty much Cassian’s worst nightmare—the two biggest problems in his life currently, uniting to become an even bigger, more stressful problem.

 

Jyn wiped blood from her mouth.

 

“He’s being an asshole,” she said.

 

“Well, she’s being a dick,” said Bodhi.

 

“I am—”

 

“Children!” grunted Cassian. “Am I dealing with _children?_ Can one of you— _maybe, just maybe—_ tell me what happened before we jump straight to petty insults?”

 

“I don’t know!” said Jyn. She scrambled to her feet from her knees where she had been and tried to retue her hair. “I was just—and then he came in and started yelling at me—”

 

“Yelling at you!” said Bodhi, who got to his feet too and was trying to straighten out his rumpled clothing. “I was _helping_ you!”

 

“ _Helping?_ ” said Jyn, outraged. “Is that what you call _helping—?_ ”

 

“To do _what_ ,” said Cassian, his voice so, so tired.

 

“To beat up that guy!”

 

“ _What_ guy,” said Cassian, grinding out the words.

 

“He deserved to get his teeth punched in, don’t worry about it,” said Jyn, finishing tying off her hair and adjusting her jacket to sit straight on her shoulders again. She had to pick up her rank insignia from the floor and pin it back on her jacket.

 

“He did, to be fair,” said Bodhi.

 

“Are you _agreeing?_ ” said Cassian, completely lost.

 

Bodhi shrugged.

 

“She’s right,” he said. “I’m not arguing _that_. He was being a handsy dick. It’s just that _she_ thinks she’s too good for my help and started beating me to hell because she thought she could do it alone and didn’t _need_ my help, which fine, whatever, but like, don’t be an asshole about it—”

 

“That’s not what happened!” said Jyn.

 

“Children,” repeated Cassian. “I am. I’m dealing with _children_.”

 

“Well, it’s just _not_.” said Jyn. “I don’t care if you beat up that asshole too, I care that you started beating up on _me_ because I—because why?”

 

Bodhi stopped. He pressed his lips together and then, peculiarly, narrowed his eyes and shrugged, a bit jagged.

 

“What do you mean you were fine with my help?” he asked. “You said, and I quote, _why do men always think I need their messiah-worthy help_?”

 

Jyn rolled her eyes.

 

“I was talking to _him!_ ” she said. “You weren’t there for the beginning of the conversation with Lieutenant Hands-y. He was offering to help me do something that I already knew how to do—you thought I was talking to you?”

 

“ _Yes_ ,” said Bodhi, sounding oddly relieved. “You were facing me when you said it! Why didn’t you argue with me when I started punching you, then?”

 

Jyn considered this a moment, and then shrugged, truthfully unknowing and frustratingly ambivalent.

 

Cassian, unbelieving, muttered something that they couldn’t make out and rubbed his forehead wearily.

 

“So neither of you are _actually_ mad at each other?” said Cassian.

 

They both shrugged.

 

“I guess not?” said Bodhi.

 

“So this is just—what you’re going to do? Have you ever tried _talking_?” said Cassian. “As in, before you try to beat the shit out of each other?”

 

Bodhi and Jyn make a long moment of eye contact before they shrug again.

 

“Why do I _try,_ ” said Cassian. “Why do I even try! All you’re going to do is keep punching your way through the base until you—I don’t know, what? Punch the Empire? Punch Emperor Palpatine? Is that what you’re going to _do?_ ”

 

“I mean,” said Jyn. “If the Emperor were here? Like, right now?”

 

Bodhi shrugged.

 

“Probably.”

 

\+ i.

 

(together.)

 

Here is what happened that landed the three of them facing the General and their own collective similarities:

 

  1. A mission that was supposed to be simple, that was supposed to garner little attention, be a quick in and out kind of trip where they left nothing more on the city they traveled to than their bootprints in the sand.



 

  1. A little boy, about age six, with tousled hair and tears drying on his cheeks.



 

  1. A stormtrooper with a gun in the little boy’s back, unforgiving and ungentle.



 

  1. A father lying dead on the street next to them both, eyes closed and face bloody.



 

and

 

  1. Their own collective traumas, their own little heartbreaks and massive complexes, all of them together in a moment of absolute, unregrettable, righteous anger.  Cassian’s elbow—the first and most sudden of the three of them to break out of their shock and internal conflict—crashing against the solid white of the stormtrooper’s helmet. Jyn realizing the situation faster than Bodhi and grabbing the gun out of the stormtrooper’s hand, throwing it as far away from all of them as she possibly could, Bodhi realizing the situation slower because he was caught on the little boy’s breath hitching and terror in his eyes and kneeling down to block his view of the fury and cruel efficiency of Jyn and Cassian’s combat abilities. An older sister, or possibly an aunt or a mother, running to all of them with tears on her face and grabbing her son from Bodhi’s hands and barely nodding a thanks before she ran as fast as she could.



  


  1. A shared look of understanding.



  


  1. So: not the _failure_ of their mission, but the little detour they had taken before they’d garnered its success.



 

  
“I told you, _specifically,_ not to cause a scene,” said Draven.

 

His arms were crossed, disapproving, in front of them all. Jyn’s jacket was singed and Cassian’s face was bloody from the fight—even if they had tried to lie to Draven why they were late on return, their clothes might have given it away before the inevitable news reached him.

 

“Sir,” said Cassian.

 

“You were late, you put us in danger, you put your _selves_ in danger, and not to mention the mission—”

 

“The _mission_ ,” muttered Jyn, which Bodhi doesn’t laugh at but might have if the situation were different.

 

“ _Sir,_ ” said Cassian, once again, although he had no defense.

 

What Draven said was true, it just wasn’t—the _full_ truth.

 

It wasn’t the truth that sat so certain in his heart: that no boy of that age should see something so terrible, even if they were at war. It wasn’t the truth that sat in Jyn’s: that no one, ever, should see their father like that, and it wasn’t the truth that clouded Bodhi with painful sympathy rather than fury: that no boy that young and desperate should have a stormtrooper say anything to him at all.

 

And there was no way to defend a half-truth with a full-truth if what the full-truth needed was something planted in your heart, years ago and eons away, but imprinted there for an eternity.

 

So he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know how to defend his team or, in fact, himself. And it’s when he’s grappling with that and wondering how to say that, that K-2, who had previously, for once, been silent, pipes up.

 

“If I may,” said K-2. “My calculations and innate knowledge of how stormtrooper guard in the Empire is managed tells me that if Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi had _not_ intercepted that stormtrooper there, he would have been guarding the street that they needed to access their ship, and upon noticing them much more imminently _there,_  alone, than while distracted, might have been able to more successfully call for backup, so—”

 

“Enough,” said Draven.

 

“I am not finished,” said K-2, because he was programmed like that and Cassian could prove that it was an accident. “So, that means that there is a...77.32% chance that neutralizing the stormtrooper then instead of later in the mission has resulted in less loss to the cause than if they had not done it then, which, as I’m sure you’re aware, are favorable odds.”

 

“ _Enough,_ ” said Draven. “You know what, Andor? I’ve had just about enough of your droid.”

 

“Thank you,” said K-2, because he challenged the assumption that droids couldn’t understand sarcasm every day of his existence.

 

Draven shook his head, muttered something that none of them could catch, and walked away—exhausted.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you all enjoyed this fic!! it's my very first 5+1 fic. i hope that i characterized bodhi alright--i don't ever really write his pov, but this prompt took hold of me and i just had to write them. i wish there were more fics about jyn and bodhi! i mean, don't get me wrong, i'm rebelcaptain trash supreme, but they're so cute together. the ultimate bros, ready to freaking fight. anyway, tell me how y'all felt about it, i hope you liked it!! please forgive me completely bs-ing anything and everything in this fic. i am bad at plot.


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